Metal Mondays – Demon Hunter “Deteriorate”

For those of you who know me know that one of my loves is the musical genre Heavy Metal.  What I want to do is every Monday highlight a song that has helped me along the way.  I know that this is an often misjudged and misunderstood genre but believe me there are some bands out there that are doing great things for the Kingdom and are speaking to a subculture in this generation that needs the light even more.  So without further ado here the first song that I will be discussing and that is Demon Hunter’s “Deteriorate”.  

 

Here are the lyrics to the song so that you can follow along

“Time has had it's way with me.
My broken tired hands cant build a thing.
The wires that have held me still embedded now in flesh to find my will.
The idle of my days is won, the empty I have fed has made me numb,
Despite what you will find in me.

The failures of my past just swirl beneath.

[Pre-chorus:]
I need a heart that carries on through the pain
When the walls start collapsing again.
Give me a soul that never ceases to follow,
Despite the infection within

[Chorus:]
Our careless feet leaving trails
Neverminding the fragile dirt we all end in.
Our careless feet leaving trails
Neverminding the fragile dirt we all end in.

This is where I find my fall the cares that held me alive don't work at all.
And every step away from here is closer to the plague I hold so dear.

I need a heart that carries on through the pain,
When the walls start collapsing again.
Give me a soul that never ceases to follow despite the infection within

Awaiting my end breathing in the day that finds me new.
Redemption begins bleeding out the flaws in place of you.
Awaiting my end breathing in the day that finds me new.
Redemption begins Redemption Begins.”

There are three things that I would like to highlight in this song that have struck me as very powerful:

1.       The first is the pre-chorus because that is a battle in which I fight every single day.  I pray that the LORD will give me a heart that never ceases to follow despite the infection within.  This is such a great reminder that I need the Gospel on a daily basis because without it I would be going astray.

2.       The chorus is a powerful reminder of what happens when we don’t travel the narrow road.  We are as the old hymn goes “Prone to wonder lord I feel it/Prone to leave the God I love”.  This proclivity arises because we are so focused on the here and now and what makes us feel good.  This YOLO mentality keeps us from understanding that we know not the number of our days and it is in this ignorance that we do not have the end in sight.  So we do need to be reminded of our fragility not in a fearful way but as reverence for the One who has created us

3.       There is a story in Luke 11:24-26 where the one demon is swept out of the house and it comes back finding it clean it returns with it seven more.  This is the case in our lives when we try and get rid of a particular sin but do not replace it with Grace.  An example is that I might combat my sin of low-self-esteem with gluttony and the gluttony might be in fact worse.  The line is the song that I really like is where they say “Redemption begins bleeding out the flaws in place of you.”  So true Redemption on a daily basis is cruciform meaning that we die to ourselves because in doing so we find real Life.